

CONGRESS, UNITED STATES. (AMERICAN SHIPPING.) 



227 



should have had our share ; our sons would have had 

 employment, and our country would have been so 

 much richer. I have three sons, masters of ships. I 

 shall never build another wooden ship ; but I would, 

 if I could, go into the iron ships ; they last longer. 

 There have oeen great improvements in them the past 

 five years, and we would have received the benefit of 

 them. 



" Why not allow the merchant, if he thinks 

 he can do it, to get his ship abroad, and try at 

 least to run it ? He will not charge the Treas- 

 ury for his failure and loss. 



" In time, as in Germany, the ownership 

 leads to repair, and repair to building. The 

 number of ship-yards and workshops increases, 

 and the tonnage leaps up under this impulse. 

 That which seemed a mustard-seed becomes a 

 mighty tree. Every nation has tried the free- 

 ship experiment but the United States, and we 

 are lowest to-day in our proportionate share of 

 the navigation of the world. No one can say 

 it is a failure until it is tried. All other 

 schemes and especially its opposite, protec- 

 tion have been tried and failed. The com- 

 mercial eminence of Great Britain, not to speak 

 of Germany, France, Italy, and Norway, is 

 supreme logic for the trial of the experiment. 

 Germany is the best illustration ; she has not 

 as good coal and iron as we have, but she be- 

 gan to buy her ships on the Clyde, as we might 

 have done a score of years ago. She is now 

 building her own iron steamships. She builds 

 now more than she buys. She has never sub- 

 sidized. Her tonnage in 1856-'57, when ours 

 began to decline, was but 166,000 tons; last 

 year she had 950,000; ours in eleven years 

 dropped from 4,400,000 to 600,000, and all its 

 vast income was lost. 



"Last week I read that a new steel steam- 

 ship, the Rugia, of 6,500 tons, was turned out 

 for our trade from the Vulcan Works at Stet- 

 tin, warranted for the safety of 1,200 passen- 

 gers, with steel life-boats and steam steering- 

 gear and a refinement in the reversal of her 

 engines in seven seconds.. German growth has 

 been in iron screw-steamers, which she began 

 to buy abroad. They could not afford to wait, 

 this phlegmatic people, fcr their own ship- 

 yards to arise, but began to repair in the black- 

 smith shops and little foundries of their ' free 

 towns, 1 and now, where the little furnace 

 glowed, mighty engines are made to mate the 

 ocean in its wildest tempest ! 



" Even Japan has a fleet of fifty-seven iron 

 steamers, and China leaves us laggard and 

 unprogressive. Fifty years of Cathay nay, 

 twenty years is worth more than a century 

 of our experience. 



" Twenty years ago Norway and Sweden 

 traded with us and had but 20,000 tons in the 

 trade ; now they have 850,000. The Viking is 

 abroad, and we are stupidly looking on. Every- 

 body is making money out of our carrying and 

 commerce but ourselves. What avails it that 

 ours is the largest carrying-trade of any na- 

 tion since we do not do the work ? It adds to 

 the humiliation. 



" It makes the humiliation worse to consider 

 the losses in money as well as the prestige at 

 sea. 



" The gentleman from Pennsylvania (Mr. 

 Randall) has called upon the Treasury for the 

 amount of ocean freights on exports and im- 

 ports during the year ending June 30, 1882. 

 Much loose understatement will be set at rest 

 by the report. It may be reached by the av- 

 erage percentage on the values. What, then, is 

 the result ? 



" Aggregate of exports and imports for the fiscal 

 year (exclusive of specie) was $1,475,132,831, and the 

 freights on this at 20 per cent, would be $295,036,566. 

 Only about 22 per cent, of the carrying trade is down 

 in American bottoms, so that our freight account for 

 the year would stand thus : Keceived by American 

 ship-owners, $42,903,044 ; received by foreign ship- 

 owners, $252,128,521. Making every deduction for 

 foreign trade with Canada,' Mexico, the West Indies, 

 Hawaiian Islands, Central America, etc., this enor- 

 mous outlay appears. 



"Looking at the wall of adamant which 

 shuts us in from all the world and shuts the 

 world out from us in this once famous enter- 

 prise of ours, can we draw hope from the 

 prospect? The gigantic results of a hundred 

 years of national existence and energy are not 

 discouraging. Over mountains and through 

 valleys, upon rivers, across continents and un- 

 der oceans, our enterprises by rail and tele- 

 graph have developed our resources. They 

 astound by their marvels. And yet halting on 

 the shores of two vast oceans we have said to 

 the land, or rather the voice of either ocean 

 has said to these enterprises and products of 

 the mine and field : ' Thus far, but by our 

 help no farther. The illimitable ocean is be- 

 yond, and its trident is in another's grasp.' 

 Upon the west we face the Orient, rich in the 

 elements of commerce. We had hoped once 

 that the Pacific would have been an American 

 lake. That hope is dead. On the east we al- 

 most touch Europe, with its teeming indus- 

 tries, peoples, and civilizations; but they come 

 to us in their own vessels, and bear away our 

 produce. In this we have no pay, part, nor 

 lot. On the south we were reaching across 

 gulf and sea to the tropics at our doors and to 

 the republics of our continent. Once we had 

 mutual relations with the Dominion on our 

 north ; but this and all such visions of material 

 supremacy and splendor have faded. ' The 

 ocean-coast still gives us its thunderous line of 

 breakers, its seven thousand miles and more, 

 indented with harbors of safety and bays of 

 wondrous beauty. The net-work of our hun- 

 dred thousand miles of railway still trembles 

 with its immense freight, the garnered opu- 

 lence of our sky, sun, soil, and mine. Cotton, 

 corn, and petroleum the triumvirate of our 

 common weal head the stately procession in 

 which a thousand forms of labor and graces of 

 art move and chant their praises to our smil- 

 ing and copious land. 



"The time was when amid the glory and 

 pride of our country our models of ships and 



